A GREEN business has welcomed a Government report highlighting the environmental cost of food transport.

Green Routes, based in Winnington, has commented on the report by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which confirms a dramatic increase in food 'miles' over the past 10 years.

This has had a dramatic effect on climate change, traffic congestion, accidents and pollution in the UK, with the report concluding that 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide were emitted in 2002 in the course of transporting food to the consumer - a 12% increase on figures a decade earlier.

Green Routes, the UK's first biofuelled transport company, was set up at the beginning of the year to offer an environmental alternative to the distribution market.

Its fleet runs exclusively on bio-diesel, made from waste vegetable matter rather than fossil fuels, and offers many advantages over petroleum-based diesel.

As well as improved product performance - the bio-diesel delivers more miles per gallon - it does not release harmful carbon emissions and therefore makes no net contribution to global warming.

Managing director Jack McEvoy said: 'Environmental concern was one of the principle reasons behind the launch of our distribution business earlier this year, and we hope the Defra report will help crystallise similar worries among manufacturers, transport operators and consumers alike.'

Responding to food and farming minister Lord Bach's promise that the Government will work with the food industry to achieve a 20% reduction in the environmental and social cost of food transport by 2012, Mr McEvoy continued: 'Over and above the enhanced product performance of bio-diesel, the ecological benefit of a green transport policy is an increasingly persuasive commercial argument.

'We believe it gives our business significant competitive advantage in the distribution market, and the Defra report's findings only reinforce that view.'